The recent intermittent loss of internet across the African continent came as a shock to many recently. While it wasn’t a complete black out in some cases, it is important to highlight what it is about.
Sources say there is ongoing transfer of traffic from a cable operated by SEACOM, a monopoly consortium operated by industrial promotional services owned by Aga Khan a british at 30%, Remgro a company owned by one late Anton Rupert who made his capital from Tobacco during apatheid South Africa and later diversified his businesses across the world including Switzerland owning brands like cartier and montblac owns 30%, Convergence partners a shady European company at 15 %, Sanlam south Africa at 15% and one Brian Herlihy from Ireland owning 10%.
What is happening is the transfer to Google operated cable called Equiano which runs from Portugal to South Africa and has much bigger data transfer capacity and speed of 144TBs per second. SEACOM’s cable started service in 2006, Equiano which is lauded as more advanced was initiated in 2018 and was finished in March 2023 ready for service, therefore it should not come as a surprise that the transfers are going on though this is not what is being said in the public.
What we are witnessing is the digital colonisation and handing over of the African digital colony from a british and European focused consortium to an American neocolonial corporation called Google.
African data, which is unprotected, is being handed over since in Africa the heads of state are sat away behind the technological curve and most of them think these things are a joke, therefore they should played with just as those chiefs who played with slavery and Africa reaped a catastrophe.
This state of affairs, we have to change it. This miserable and negligent outlook a lack of any clear vision for the African Continent by misguided heads of state must be rejected and expunged.
By: Kwame Gonza, Technology follower, Railway engineering consultant, and PanAfricanist Member, ACUP-African Continental Unity Party.
